Friday, March 19, 2010

Coffee-Cake Muffins

It was typical Saturday morning at our home... everybody can wake up as lazy as they want. This is the only morning of the week that we can do that.What about Sunday morning? No..no... We go to Church, after all busy activities during the weekdays.

So... what's for breakfast in Saturday morning? Hhmmm the choice must be something easy and fast to prepare. On last weekend, the choice was pastry breakfast ... Muffin! That time I decided to try a recipe from Martha Stewart Magazine.

As we know, baking muffin is a simple job in kitchen. Simply mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients. No require mixer, fancy kitchen appliance or any special skills. Just prepare the ingredients and mixed them as quickly and lightly as possible, only stirring to moisten it. If you overmix the batter, tough muffins can be a hard lesson.

Don't forget to read through the recipe before you begin, so that you have all the chopping, grating and blending done before you start mixing the ingredients.For this muffin... I'm so happy with the result.

... The aroma of the spice offers warmest morning greeting to my family.

Coffee-Cake MuffinsSource : Martha Stewart Living Magazine, April 2004 (Easy Entertaining-Brunch)Make 10 You can bake the muffins up to a week ahead of time. Let them cool completely, then wrap in plastic wrap and freeze in resealable plastic bags. Warm thawed muffin, wrapped in foil, in a 300 degree(F) oven, eight to ten minutes. Alternatively, make the streusel and mix the wet ingredients up to two days in advance; refrigerate. The dry ingredients and cinnamon sugar can be stored in airtight containers at room temperature.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degree F. Stir together the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl; set aside. Butter 10 cups of a standard non-stick muffin tin; set aside.

2. Make Streusel: Spread out pecans on a baking sheet. Toast in oven, shaking occasionally, until crisp and fragrant, 8 to 10 minutes. Let cool completely.

3. Raise oven temperature to 375 degree F. Put brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, and flour in a medium bowl. Blend in butter with your fingertips until well combined. Crumble pecans into small pieces; work into streusel with fingertips until combined. Cover and refrigerate.

5. Combine dry ingredients: Whisk together eggs, vanilla, and milk in a seperate large bowl. Whisk in melted butter.

6. Pour wet ingredients over dry ingredients; fold with a rubber spatula until combined. Spoon batter into buttered cups, filling each less than one-third full. Gently press batter into a even layer.

7. Divide reserved streusel among cups, then to with remaining batter. Sprinkle with reserved cinnamon sugar. Fill any empty cups in the tin halfway with water. Bake muffin until puffed and golden brown, about 18 minutes.

8. Let cool slightly in tin, 5-10 minutes. Turn out onto a wire rack; let cool a few minutes more before serving warm.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

[TGIF] Avocado Juice & Chocolate Bagelen

I really love Friday, the last day of the busy weekdays.

I enjoy every single minute while doing all the activities during that day; waking up in the morning, preparing breakfast and lunch box, driving to drop my children off to their school, enjoying my 2100m long swimming, ... and all other activities before welcoming the weekend. I always try to arrive home before late afternoon, and stay away from the famous 'Jakarta Friday Night Traffic'.

The other thing that very enjoyable is my children finishing their school 1.5 hour earlier than the previous four school days. Normally, after picking them up from school, we start to make some plans ... what can we do together on Friday afternoon and during the weekend. The ideas just come out without too much thinking. Sometimes back at home we decide to bake something, or buying ice creams at the shop near by our home and enjoy it together in our backyard, or we do grocery shopping together (they love to do this one), or we stop by in a mall just to enjoy our favorite frozen yogurt... We've never run out of idea for the Friday afternoon activities :)

So last week... I decided to start recording some of our activities on Friday afternoon.

That time we went straight home from school. No plan, what to do at home. As usual, when we arrived home, my son went straight to his favorite activity; playing soccer in our backyard.

I went to the kitchen and found out that the avocados I bought a day before were ready to be enjoyed. We never do other things to avocado, ...the delicious avocado 'creamy' juice is the best choice. Very easy to make and we love it so much. We just blend the avocado meat and mix it with condense milk, a little bit sugar, cocoa powder and lots of ice cubes. We always love to serve it with some chocolate sauce.

For snack... we enjoyed the avocado juice with chocolate bagelen.

Bagelen is (dry) toast with sweet cream on top. Normally the cream that contains mixture of butter and icing sugar is spread on the bread before they are toasted. The result is a crunchy delicious toast.

Our chocolate bagelen wasn't homemade snack... my brother brought it from Bandung, after he spent his vacation there. Yup, bagelen is a popular snack from Bandung. Some of famous bakeries in Bandung claim their bagelen as the best one! Ours was from Bawean Bakery (a.k.a the famous SweetHeart Bakery).